Sacrifices
by simply-aly
Summary: Caroline decides on a plan to save Elena and loses herself while implementing it.


It was a stupid idea—the stupidest thing she's ever done—but she had to do something, and it was the only thing she could think of, so she did it. She didn't tell anyone. She knew they'd try to talk her out of it.

Caroline Forbes was never one to blindly ignore the signs, and the signs were pointing straight to the imminent arrival of Klaus. Upon learning Elena was bound for sacrifice once Klaus was dead, Caroline realized it was in all of their best interests to keep Klaus alive. And Caroline, ever prepared, had a plan.

-x-

It was simple enough to get in touch with him. He was on his way already and Caroline supposed she sparked his interest when she declared, quite boldly for a newbie vampire, that she had a proposition to make.

She directed him to a field fifty miles out of town and waited.

Exactly as her watch struck midnight, a tall, lean, dark haired man was standing in front of her. Instinctively, she stood up straighter as she made to speak. She wanted to be authoritative, wanted him to respect her in some way.

She never spoke a word, although he spoke four.

"You'll come with me."

And she didn't really have a choice.

-x-

She didn't speak for the first two hundred miles on the road. The were in a limo and he had given her a glass of champagne which she had yet to taste, and for the first time in her life, she was shocked silent.

She had so many questions, so many things she had to know, but she couldn't bring herself to speak them aloud. Instead, she just thought them to herself, thinking in circles.

_Where were they going? Would she ever get to go back? Who knew she was gone? Was he planning to kill her? What was his plan?_

It takes her a while to realize this was exactly what she wanted.

Klaus was alive, away from Mystic Falls, and not an immediate threat to Elena.

-x-

When she did finally speak, it was only because he was asking her questions. He wanted to know what her name was; how she became a vampire; if she liked it, if she was enjoying life more as a vampire than when she was human.

He wanted to know about humans. What the current state of the world is like, recent natural disasters, news from around the world. Caroline tried to tell him what she could, but she was never a politics kind of girl.

She still had questions, but her voice only seemed to work when he willed it to.

-x-

He took her phone away when she first tried to contact Elena. He didn't tell her why—didn't say anything, actually—just took it from her fingers and placed it in his pocket.

Caroline wanted to protest, but the words wouldn't come out.

-x-

Klaus lived in a loft in New York City. Caroline figured it has much more to do with anonymity than an actual love for the city.

He led her to a bedroom and told her it was hers. And when she looked around, she found it had many of the things she used on a daily basis. Even the clothing was both her size and her style.

And there was a lot of it.

-x-

He required that she dine with him each evening.

When he first told her, she thought it was strange because, really, they're both vampires. It's not really dining so much as feeding. But the blood in their glasses was only part of the meal. She found out he typically had human food prepared in the evenings, most of it so obscure she'd never heard of it before.

He also required that she dress up if ever she were to leave her bedroom.

Luckily for her, she was given many things to choose from.

-x-

They didn't interact much for the first two years of her stay.

Caroline was too confused and more frightened than she'd ever let on; and Klaus, well, Klaus was too enigmatic for Caroline to ever figure out, but Caroline decided he just didn't know how to handle himself around her, so he opted for not dealing with it.

Then, one night, after dinner, he touched her hand as she was ascending the stairs.

It was a simple touch, but it was the first they'd shared, and when she looked back at him, her eyes lit up and she had so much she wanted to say.

But nothing came out.

-x-

He started coming to her room in the early hours of the morning the sixth year she was there.

By then, he was the only person she'd had any semblance of constant communication with for the last six years so she wasn't in any position to turn down his silent demand.

She knew it was some form of Stockholm syndrome. She wasn't stupid enough to believe otherwise. She knew it wasn't love. Knew it wasn't even lust, really.

They were just the only option the other had so it was truly inevitable that they'd fall into bed together at some point.

-x-

Caroline spent a great deal of her time staring out the large glass windows, watching the cars and people go by.

It was the only way she was ever going to experience normal life, by her definition, and she both loved and hated the time she spent looking out those windows.

-x-

Caroline hadn't been outside for fifteen years the day Klaus took her out again, determined to find Elena.

She had started crying when Klaus told her of his plans and she didn't know if it was because she was happy to leave that loft or if it was because she was scared her usefulness was over and Elena would die.

-x-

Finding Elena proved difficult (Caroline suspected she learned a few tricks from Katherine) and they spent twenty-five years chasing ghosts before they located her in a small town in Maine.

Klaus had Caroline get out of the car and knock on Elena Salvatore's front door without him. He remained parked in the limo far enough down the street to not cause immediate suspicion. It was the first time she'd been so far from him since he'd taken her.

-x-

Caroline walked shakily up to the front door of the house with the white picket fence she wasn't surprised Elena had chosen and hesitated briefly before knocking on the door.

Elena opened the door and Caroline was hardly surprised to find that she only looked to be about twenty one or twenty two. She wondered if this was good or bad. Was this what Klaus had expected? What would he do if it wasn't?

"Caroline?" Elena asked hesitantly, surprise written all over her face.

"Elena?" Caroline whispered, shocked to be talking, as she hadn't spoken a word in forty years.

She didn't spend time wondering why she was able to speak, however. She just grabbed her friend and hugged her close. "You have no idea how much I missed you," she mumbles.

-x-

Caroline spent the next few hours speaking with Elena alone. She wouldn't talk about herself and avoided any questions Elena asked about where she'd been until Elena just stopped asking questions.

Caroline loved hearing of Elena's adventures, though. Where she'd been, what she'd done, and how the hell she'd ended up with Damon after all she'd said about it always being Stefan.

Apparently, Stefan had chosen Katherine in the end, and after Elijah reluctantly let Katherine out of the tomb, Elena had realized that, in Stefan's eyes, it'd always be Katherine for him so they broke it off and Stefan left town with Katherine.

"She helped us in the early years of being on the run. Told us how to stay undetected, where to go and where to avoid," Elena said, proving Caroline's theory.

Damon came home when it was dark, and Caroline smiled when she saw him. She hadn't known why it was so nice to see him—she'd hated him when she left—but it had been forty years and she'd had a lot of time to reflect on everything. And when it came right down to it, he was her sire.

"There's a strange limo parked halfway down Water Street," Damon told Elena.

As soon as the words were out of Damon's mouth, there was a knock on the door.

-x-

Klaus didn't wait for anyone to answer the door, he just walked right in. "Come here, Caroline," he said, shutting the front door behind him. And Caroline, almost as if under a spell, got up from where she sat and walked purposefully over to him.

He held her hand in his, but she couldn't say if he did this to hold her to him or to be somewhat affectionate. She assumes the former though, because affection is not in his nature.

Caroline watches in mute horror as Elena's eyes widen and Damon pushes her slightly behind him. It didn't matter that she was a vampire, Damon would always protect her as if she was human. "What did you do, Caroline?" Elena asked her, her voice betraying the anger she was feeling behind the fear.

"I—I didn't have a choice," Caroline defended herself. "You needed to be protected, and I knew how to make it happen."

"What did you _do_?" Elena asked again, not fully understanding.

Damon knew though. "She sacrificed herself."

-x-

Elena started crying then. "I didn't want this, Caroline. I made that deal with Elijah because I wanted everyone to live and be happy. If you'd of told me…."

"I know," Caroline said softly. And she did know. She knew when she came up with the idea. She knew Elena didn't want that for her but she wanted Elena to have a life, so she did it anyway.

-x-

Klaus led Caroline from the house after that and as soon as they were both back in the limo, on their way back to the loft, Caroline realized he never said a word.

She wanted to ask him why they went to see Elena. Why he let Elena live. Why, why, why…. But her voice didn't work again so she stayed silent.

-x-

The years passed in varying degrees of speeds. Sometimes she felt like time was going by faster than she could process and sometimes it dragged slowly.

The only constant was Klaus.

-x-

He took her out every few years. They'd go on 'vacations.'

Sometimes he even took her back to see Elena, although it took a few visits before Elena would even speak to her. The first few visits she sat outside and talked with Damon, tried to explain why she did what she did.

Klaus never stayed with her during those visits. He was around, of course, but his presence was not put upon the Salvatores. A part of him, Caroline decided, must still resent them all for not allowing him to break the curse.

She still never spoke around him. When she was with the Salvatores, she could speak; but as soon as Klaus removed her from their presence, her voice died.

-x-

After a few hundred years, they stopped visiting the Salvatores. Klaus had noticed that Caroline stopped smiling at the thought of going and she was never happy when he returned for her. The truth was, she was just never happy anymore.

She wasn't sad either, though.

She was just Caroline.


End file.
